Emacs

Emacs is an editor that is very common on the networks. It is
an extremely powerful editor and trying to explain it all would
take a book. But entry-level emacs is fairly simple and with only a
few basic commands anyone can use it productively.

Using Emacs

To enter emacs to edit a file, simply enter 'emacs filename'
at your prompt. If you use the name of an existing file you will
automatically load the file into emacs to be edited. If you use a
new file name you will create a new file with the editor.

You can use emacs as your editor in nearly every application
that calls for one. Therefore, emacs can be your editor for
direct file editing and netnews. If you would like to use emacs
for all of your editing, and have it be the default for programs
using an editor, you can modify your '.login' file. The .login is
the file where your defaults are stored. Emacs the .login and add
these two lines:

setenv EDITOR /usr/local/bin/emacs

setenv VISUAL /usr/local/bin/emacs

These are called environment variables and many programs use
these for their default settings. To make these take effect
immediately type source .login. This will be done automatically
the next time you login.

Before explaining the commands, you need to understand some of
the terminology. A letter preceded by a ^ indicates that letter
is a control character. For instance, ^X means you hold down
the Ctrl key while pressing x. It is convention to use
uppercase when writing these characters into a manual; however,
you do NOT press shift while typing them.

A letter preceded by M- indicates that the letter is a Meta
command. Meta is entered as ^[, or control left bracket. Using
control and meta commands, and combinations thereof, allow you to
do a wide range of tasks within emacs. The following list is by
no means complete, it only covers the basic commands you need to
get started.

Note: Most of these commands are standard, but some are
particular to WPI. If you use another site, double check these
commands before using them.

Command

Description

^D

Delete character cursor is on.

^K

Kill from the cursor to the end of the line, stores
deleted text in kill ring. You can store as much text in
the kill ring as you'd like with successive kills.

^Y

Yanks text back from kill ring. Use with ^K for cut and
paste editing.

^L

Reset and clear screen.

^A

Move to the start of the line.

^E

Move to the end of the line.

^F

Move forward (right) one character. (right arrow)

^B

Move backward (left) one character (left arrow)

^P

Move up one line. (up arrow)

^N

Move down one line. (down arrow)

^G

When all else fails, quit emacs. Use this in case you
make a typo with a command, it will abort the command.

^T

Transpose char on cursor and before cursor.

^Z

Pause the job. fg at your prompt will restart it.

^U

Followed by number, ^U will repeat the next argument
that number of times. Without a number it is a multiple of
4: ^U is times 4, ^U^U is times 16, etc.